American Government
Although the American Revolution marked the end of the British rule in the thirteen colonies, the actual nation did not begin for several years. The first official American government, the Articles of Confederation, held a loose collaboration between states without any central authority. Each state functioned as a separate entity with their own form of government while the Articles of Confederation acted more like a committee than an actual government. Several situations indicated the need for an overhaul of the inherently weak Articles of Confederation and the initiation of the constitutional convention and subsequent Constitution.
* The Articles of Confederation were first established to initiate some form of unification against the European powers, predominately England during the Revolutionary War. Militarily, the thirteen colonies maintained their own militias and were provisionally unified under George Washington to face the English army. The government maintained no actual control over the army and all the power beyond the states were granted to George Washington. Scholars still marvel at the willingness for Washington to relinquish the army after the Revolution ended, nearly all individuals in history given the type of control Washington wielded over the military most likely would have set-up some type of military dictatorship.
* Also under the Articles of Confederation, there was no ability to tax or force states to grant provisions and funds. Military officials and militia essentially went unpaid during their service and after it, while the Articles of Confederation continued as the law of the land. Beyond the failure to grant promised pay and pension, the army went starving and without clothes for much of the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress had no ability to collect or guarantee these provision and much of those received were due to the genius of Washington’s aide-de-camps.
* Power was granted under the Articles of Confederation to allow the congress to make decisions. Yet, they maintained no ability or means of force to carry out these decisions. Any measure would have to be unanimously accepted by all states under the Articles of Confederation lending to the inherent weakness of the government.
* Two examples of structural weakness illuminated the need for the creation of a stronger national government. Shay’s rebellion showed that the government under the Articles could not even protect shipping interest from domestic attacks, maintaining no army or police force. On the foreign front, the inability to challenge the Barbary pirates that attacked shipping exports underlined this weakness from any type of force levied against government interests.
The Articles of Confederation eventually folded and ceded to the constitutional convention. There was far from any guarantee that the convention would succeed and many at the time felt the American experiment would fail long before it even began.
